BRENTWOOD — Calling a convicted child sex offender’s crimes against a 5-year-old girl while she was at a home day care in Newmarket “truly atrocious,” Superior Court Judge Kenneth R. McHugh sentenced Timothy McKenna, 49, to 30 to 60 years in state prison.

McHugh on Friday sentenced McKenna, 49, formerly of Newmarket, to three consecutive 10- to 20-year terms in state prison and a fourth suspended 10- to 20-year term for four convictions on Class A aggravated felonious sexual assault charges.

Earlier, McHugh vacated two other convictions because they were duplicative of the other charges, he said.

McHugh pointed out McKenna’s convictions did not represent four separate sexual assaults, but repeated sexual assaults and rapes that began when the victim was just 5 years old, and continued for five years, increasing in seriousness as time went by.

“We’re talking about a constant barrage of assaults,” McHugh said at a sentencing hearing in Rockingham Superior Court.

The judge said McKenna had “every opportunity” to stop his conduct during the five years the victim was at the home day care, but chose not to.

“The bottom line is ... he treated her like she was an inanimate object,” McHugh said.

McKenna repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted the girl because he didn’t think she would tell anybody, and if she did, no one would believe her, McHugh said.

As part of the sentence, he also ordered McKenna not to begin his treatment as a sexual offender until his third term, so he could experience the punishment part of the sentence before the rehabilitation begins.

The victim did not attend the hearing, but her parents did, as did McKenna’s longtime girlfriend and several of his friends.

McKenna sat silently during most of the hearing, and declined his opportunity to address the court.

In asking for three 10- to 20-year state prison sentences with the fourth one suspended, Assistant County Attorney Karen Springer said McKenna ruined the victim’s childhood and forever changed how she interacts with other people.

Springer noted the victim’s mother “entrusted her child to a day care provider” when she was 5, and that McKenna raped and sexually assaulted the girl while he was dating the sister of the day care provider, who lived next door.

The victim, who is now a 20-year-old college student, kept the assaults to herself and suffered physical reactions whenever she thought she saw McKenna around Newmarket.

“She literally, at the prom, had to be taken out in an ambulance,” Springer said.

The prosecutor noted the victim decided not to attend the sentencing after testifying in McKenna’s trial in September, because “she didn’t want to give the defendant an opportunity to see her again.”

Springer said the victim is trying to “separate herself,” from what happened, but hasn’t been able to move on. “(The victim) will be living with this for the rest of her life,” she said.

But Springer read a statement in court that the victim had written about what she had been through. “Not only did Tim steal years from my childhood ... he stole my innocence. It has been a lifetime of impact. ... A piece of me has been taken and I know I will never get it back.” She said while other people her age remember fond childhood memories, “I spend most of my time trying not to think about my past.”

The victim also wrote how she continues to struggle with what he did to her “each day.”

“He has truly changed my outlook on the world and the people in it,” she wrote.

The victim’s father, a longtime Newmarket resident, stood before McHugh and asked him to impose a long prison sentence. He looked at McKenna toward the end of his victim impact statement, and noted how the convicted child sex offender had the chance to plead guilty to the charges so the victim did not have to testify at trial, but refused.

“You stole her childhood. ... Your future needs to be in prison,” the victim’s father said.

McKenna’s attorney, Wendy Roberts of Lancaster, asked for a single 10- to 20-year sentence, along with a consecutive 7½- to 15-year sentence, with five years of that suspended. Roberts said because of the age of her client, the sentence Springer asked for and received “is essentially life in prison.”

The crimes occurred at the day care provider’s house on Forest Street between Dec. 21, 1997, and Oct. 1, 2002, Springer said previously.